Windsor's new councillors want to fix infrastructure and build neighbourhoods

The new faces replacing four incumbents on Windsor's city council hope to get back to building neighbourhoods and focusing on infrastructure.

Windsorites chose Fabio Costante to replace John Elliott in Ward 2, Gary Kaschak to follow Bill Marra in Ward 8, Kieran McKenzie to replace Hilary Payne in Ward 9 and Jim Morrison to replace Paul Borrelli in Ward 10.

"Those were wards where people were clearly not happy with the representation that they had," said Pat Papadeas, law professor at St. Clair College.

"I think that goes to the heart that they weren't listening to the people."

In Ward 2, Costante said his message of "neighbourhood-building" spoke to voters.

"I think that was the change that folks were looking for," said Costante, who won a tight race against the only other candidate and incumbent, John Elliott.

Costantesaid he has a "bucket list" of issues to work on in Ward 2, such as addressing speeding in residential areas, construction and the new bridges coming.

"This is a very important time in the west end."

Kieran McKenzie, who won over the incumbent by a margin of 2,193 votes, said the "simple things" are important, such as making sure people can cross streets safely.

"Those things are real issues in Ward 9, and we need to fix them," he said, adding that other issues include making sure infrastructure investments are keeping pace with the speed of development in the neighbourhood.

Jim Morrison, who won over Borrelli in Ward 10, would agree.

"I know it's not sexy, but we need to put money into the basic infrastructure to fix our city that's been deteriorating for such a long time," said Morrison.

According to him, spending on big projects that are "nice-to-haves" need to stop.

Ward 8'sKaschak, who won the race in a ward with no incumbent, mentioned fixing roads and preventing basement floods as two main priorities.

He said he's excited to work with the rest of council over the next four years to address those issues.

"I think we're going to see some popular and precise decisions, that Windsorites are going to be proud of and happy with," he said.